By: Phil Williams
The all-you-can-eat buffet is a singularly unique Americanism. Pay one price, and belly on up to fill your plate. Complete one serving, go back for seconds. Even thirds! I once had a restaurant manager tell me that a buffet restaurant in the South is hard to manage because people here love to eat!
Just as much as Southerners love some hot food, salad helpings, and serve-yourself ice cream bars, conservatives just enjoyed bellying up to the SCOTUS buffet this week for a heaping helping of landmark rulings!
The last week of June 2025 could well prove to be a fixed spot in time for those who love the rule of law. A week when rulings came down from the high bench at the Supreme Court of the United States that impacted how and why we do things with a decidedly conservative bent.
Much of the goals for the right side of the spectrum are vested in the Trump agenda which has been lodged squarely in the various federal courts whose decision-making processes have time and again seemed built on politics and not legal truism.
Then came the all-you-can-eat buffet of Supreme Court servings. A plethora of legal caloric intake. Entrees of procedure. High fiber, low carb, legalese. And some sweet opinions for dessert. We opened the week with Department of Homeland Security v. D.V.D and a ruling that allows the Trump administration to send illegal immigrants to third-party countries other than their country of origin for detention. Suddenly the asylum claims that the Biden administration gave to everyone with a hangnail no longer requires the U.S. to build prisons to detain illegals in perpetuity. Serving number 1!
We quickly went back for seconds. Medina v. Planned Parenthood South Atlantic determined that states do indeed have a right under the Tenth Amendment to deny Medicaid funds to abortion providers like Planned Parenthood. Since the Dobb’s decision overturned Roe v. Wade, the outcome of this case should have been easy to predict. Yet it took the conservative justices entering the fray to serve up helping number two by setting the abortion industry back on its heels.
Then came Friday! And the legal eating really began in earnest!
By a vote of 6-3 in Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton, SCOTUS upheld state law in Texas that simply required an age-verification requirement for online users of pornography. The porn industry screeched it would chill free speech rights under the Constitution. The conservative majority found otherwise, saying the law “only incidentally burdens the protected speech of adults.” Kids are first. Porn is last. Serving number 3!
Then came a side of goodness to go with the robust portions of conservative edibles. Christian and Muslim parents combined their efforts to press public school systems in Maryland to allow them to opt out of curriculum that promoted transgender and LGBTQ ideology. The school system argued “practicality” but the parents argued their First Amendment rights to religious freedom. SCOTUS agreed and Mahmoud v. Taylor affirmed a parent’s right to have the final say in culture clashes in public schools, with Justice Alito writing in the majority opinion: “We reject this chilling version of the power of the state to strip away the critical right of parents to guide the religious development of their children.” Perfectly cooked. Serving number 4!
The main course of the conservative buffet binge came with Trump v. CASA. This one case cracked open the legal stalemate on Trump’s “America First” agenda.
Trump v. CASA began as a challenge to President Donald Trump’s executive order ending birthright citizenship for children of illegal aliens. It came to the justices of the Supreme Court as an emergency appeal with the Trump administration asking the question: Do federal district courts have broad power to issue “nationwide” or “universal” injunctions prohibiting the federal government from taking action anywhere in the country?
Once again, in a 6-3 majority opinion the Supreme Court restored order and served up a piping hot plate of sustenance for the conservative cause. Rogue judges at the federal district court level have been directed to stay in their lanes and rule in such a way that matches their jurisdictional authorities. Writing for the majority Justice Amy Coney Barrett stated: “When a court concluded that the Executive Branch has acted unlawfully, the answer is not for the court to exceed its power, too.” Serving number 5… with dessert!
The ruling in Trump v. CASA very clearly affords the Trump administration the ability to move forward without the concern that liberal activist attorneys will forum shop for liberal activist judges to obtain liberal activist nationwide injunctions. Generally speaking, barring the certification of a broad-based class action suit, a lower court in one state can no longer enjoin an activity in another.
I love the law. I respect the law. As an attorney, I also know that there is supposed to be one version of the law that is blindfolded so that justice may be served correctly, evenly, and expeditiously. For the past several years the abuses of our amazing system of justice have made an absolute mockery of the law. The left honed their craft of lawfare tactics. They used lawsuits, and nationwide injunctions like a bludgeon. The rule of law was not what the progressive left sought. Where the courts cannot be trusted to operate blindly there is no justice.
The preservation of a well-ordered society comes from having a judicial system built and maintained on the premise that law is meaningful, necessary, and even indispensable.
Liberals can’t get around the Constitution unless they can pack the Court with liberal justices who refuse to be bound by the doctrine of judicial constraint.
Our founders knew what they were doing. A tripartite form of government must be preserved by the support and maintenance of conservative caretakers, and in this case, conservative justices, who take the role seriously and fiercely interpret the Constitution as a document the lower courts have no right to change on their own.
Welcome to the all-you-can-ear SCOTUS buffet y’all. Eat you fill.
By: Phil Williams
June 20, 2025
